Damaged Goods
by Jander Panell
Summary: Iroh watches his niece touch her scar, and wonders what she is thinking.  Fem!Zuko, buckets of angst.  Oneshot.


**Title: **Damaged Goods

**Word Count: **967

**Characters**: ****Fem!Zuko, Iroh

**Rating**: **T**

**Warnings**: Gender bending, buckets of angst, sexual references

**Summary**: Iroh watches his niece touch her scar, and wonders what she is thinking.

**Author's Note**: This is the first Avatar fic I've ever written and felt confident enough to show others. I've been a fan ever since the show first aired, but this is my first time participating in fandom, so I'm a little nervous. Especially since this is, well, a genderbend fic. Then again, much as I love Zuko as he is in the canon, I somehow believe he'd be 150 percent more awesome if he were a girl. Because I'm weird like that.

Also, this is my first time writing Iroh, and it took me forever to get him right. Even now I'm not all that satisfied with my portrayal of him, so of _course _I made him the viewpoint character. What was I thinking?

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><p>When Iroh walks into Zuko's cabin, he already knows what he'll see: his niece sitting on the bed, holding a mirror flat on her lap with one hand and touching her scar with the other.<p>

Iroh clasps his hands together and stands in the doorway and watches. Zuko's back is hunched, her shoulder blades quiver. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought his niece was crying - if she was the crying sort of girl. She isn't. He knows even without seeing what she's really doing. She does this often enough. Digs her fingers into the stiff, reddened skin rimming her eye, twists and drags and pulls as if she longs to _rip _the physical badge of dishonor clean off her face. And she never stops glaring into that mirror.

Iroh knows from experience that she can sit there for hours, uninterrupted, just tormenting herself. Once, she tried to hide it from him; once, he tried to get her to stop, worried that the constant aggravation would prevent the scar from healing properly. These days, though...Iroh doesn't want to think of it as giving up. More like he's grown used to her, and she to him. They don't have many options when they spend nearly all their time crammed together on the high seas.

He might have grown used to this behavior, but it still makes him unfathomably sad inside. Not the sort of body-racking, mind-consuming grief that tormented him after Lu Ten's death, but something softer and more insidious. The feeling that he has, on some level, failed her. Perhaps if he hadn't allowed her into the war meeting, none of this would have happened. She would still be that joyful, energetic little girl who loved turning cartwheels in the palace gardens, instead of this scarred teenager wearing a man's armor, head shaved in disgrace and remaining hair tied into a boy's phoenix tail. It seems when she left the Fire Nation, she renounced not just her honor but her femininity as well.

Maybe it wouldn't bother him so much if he didn't feel that on some level, Zuko does want to be a normal girl again. A normal girl with a father who loves her and friends who won't betray her and, very possibly, a boyfriend. But they both know that can never happen, and the scar is proof. Iroh knows it on a more conscious level than Zuko - that even if this hunt for the Avatar succeeds, even if Ozai welcomes her back with open arms, his niece will still be a scarred woman. Damaged goods. Unmarriageable, and in Ozai's eyes, that's all a daughter is worth. It makes Iroh hurt inside to think of it that way, but he knows the world isn't fair like that.

Zuko knows too. She must, because why else spend so much time examining the scar? She certainly doesn't do it out of vanity. Iroh wonders what she's thinking, as she scrapes her nails against the gnarled nub of her ear. Maybe imagining what she would look like without it. Maybe thinking about that drunken Earth Kingdom man at the last dock who called her a one-copper whore and promptly got a face full of fire in response. Iroh doesn't know, but whatever the specifics, he knows it's tearing his niece apart from the inside. He longs to tell her that she is a beautiful girl, scar or no scar, and that she is not as alone as she thinks, and that she is loved already - but he knows she will not stand to hear anything of the sort. So he doesn't press it.

Instead, he says, stepping inside and summoning all the lightness he can manage, "Princess Zuko, you should not bend your neck so much. You will suffer back pains when you are as old as me."

"Back pains!" Zuko stands in a single furious movement and throws the mirror down on the bed. "Of course that's the only thing a fat old man like you would worry about! You know, maybe _I'd _rather worry about not finding the Avatar by the time I'm as old as you!"

She whirls around and throws her arm out; a trail of fire arcs after it. Iroh sighs.

"Now, now, my niece...I only wish for you to be happy."

"Happy? I don't need to be happy! I need to capture the Avatar!" Zuko stalks past him, out of the door. "Are we still heading to the South Pole? There are reports that someone's been seen airbending on Whale Tail Island - "

"I hope you are not forgetting those 'reports' were made by a man so drunk he could not tell his feet from his head," Iroh says, following slowly after her. He does not need to add that it was the same man who called her a whore.

Zuko blanches, then reddens nastily. She clenches her hands into fists. "It's the only clue I've got right now, and it's better than sitting around doing nothing. As long as there's a chance, I don't care what I have to do. The Avatar's mine. You understand?"

Iroh turns away. Fair enough. He understands, and above all he understands that the Avatar gives his niece hope. But even hope isn't enough. Enough to undo a scar, to undo years of banishment. To undo the pain she will face even if she does return to the Fire Nation. Above all, Iroh longs to spare her that pain - but he knows as well as Zuko how impossible a dream that is.

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><p>Please do review!<p> 


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